I can’t prove it, but Met losses to the Phillies are the most annoying losses there are. The Phillies have become the new Marlins.
Move over, Miami. You’re no longer quite that team.
All losses are the worst, and I don’t doubt that if you catch me after a defeat at the hands of the Dodgers, the Padres, whoever, that I will testify that the experience was particularly awful. But losing to the Phillies has lately left me more annoyed than I can remember being toward anybody since the heyday of the useless Marlins (not to be confused with the contending Marlins, who are a whole other kettle of undesirable fish).
This has nothing to do with the dormant Mets-Phillies rivalry, a feud without fuse for a few years now, what with us relatively up and them undeniably down. I don’t like seeing Ryan Howard and Carlos Ruiz thawed out, but even the presence of unfrozen caveman first baseman and catcher doesn’t automatically stoke the old competitive fires. It has nothing to do with the feisty fans down the Turnpike. I don’t even have it in for any given Phillie.
That’s probably the thing. There isn’t an Utley or a Rollins in the bunch, not yet. They may possess pockets of talent, but they’re not hateful. Yet they do something against the Mets more consistently than any other opponent.
They win almost only close games against us. Check out the scores of every game the Mets have lost to the Phillies over the past three seasons.
3-2.
5-4.
6-5.
6-0.
7-6.
7-2.
3-1.
14-8.
4-3.
7-5.
3-0.
1-0.
5-2.
5-4.
And, on Saturday night, 4-2.
That’s fifteen losses since 2014 (not a terrible ratio for a team we play nineteen times annually). Twelve of them were in save opportunity range, no more than three runs. Six were by one run. I can’t the say Phillies 14 Mets 8 was aspirational, exactly, but if you have to lose, you don’t mind once in a while sucking it up early and moving on.
You can’t do that in these Phillie losses. You know the games could’ve been won and it irks the hell out of you they weren’t. All it would have taken was one hit with runners in scoring position; one more suitably deep fly ball with a man on third and less than two out; one fewer ball thrown away; one luckier bounce; one less sign of vitality from the otherwise cryogenically preserved remnants of the Phillies we used to hate on merit.
The Mets did several things well Saturday night. There was a large enough sum of parts to win, but not enough of a whole not to lose. The game didn’t break their way. Some games won’t. Sometimes you’re comfortable with a shrug. Against Philadelphia, it’s too close to rhetorically ask, whaddayagonna do?
You’re gonna get another hit, make a better throw, keep a runner from taking an extra base. You’re gonna not wonder how you lost to these guys when the game was so winnable.
You should, anyway.
The whole risp thing is so frustrating. So i think we are now 5-24 when we dont hit a home run
That cant be sustainable if we want to sniff the postseason.
Then i look at the nats game boxscore. Their batting averages aside from murph and ramos are lame, yet they are able to bunch hits together. They won without murph two nights in a row. Tanner roark mows down the pirates, including the guys who usually destroy us in kang and harrison.
Im just really frustrated right now and i know im not alone
Everyone is Mikey. But there’s another way to look at it. The inability to score without homers is due to multiple factors. I’m probably missing some, but here’s my list:
1. Bad hitting
2. Injuries
3. Lack of speed
4. Good opponent pitching/defense
5. Bad luck
The really good news is that 3-4 of those categories (minimum) will undoubtedly improve in the 2nd half. Having Lagares and Reyes in the lineup tremendously improves our speed. I don’t want to jinx anything but we can’t possibly have as many devastating injuries in the 2nd half. And finally luck:
Just look at last night. Bases loaded 2 out, Cabrera drills a sinking liner to left center. Asche (not exactly Willie Mays) somehow gets a perfect jump and makes a sliding catch. Then in the bottom of the inning, Franco swings at a pitch a foot inside and bloops a dying quail just over the infield for the go ahead run. Thats just horrible luck and that kind of thing has happened all year. It’s almost inevitable that our luck will improve and so will our numbers.
Yep i hear you matt….i just feel like with the mets #1 should be weighted more because they tend to make average pitchers look better than they are which then weights #4 more. Or that could just be my frustration being weighted more:)
The Mets are stuck in a zone between greatness and mediocrity. The strength of the team, its pitching, is offset in part by the weakness of its hitting.
No one will ever be the New Marlins in my book. The hated Fish were the fastest to match the Mets’ two WS Championships, among expansion teams. They have no fan base (why else would an erstwhile MLB team hire cheerleaders?), and among other things, contributed to the Mets’ nearly forgotten mini-collapse of 1998.
The Phillies have been around for 133 years, have a long and storied history, and a dedicated (albeit sometimes knuckleheaded) fan base. The Phillies and their fans are irritating, but the Marlins will always be the most despised for me.
To clarify, Will, I was addressing the character of contemporary Mets losses and the annoyance quotient the losses themselves deliver — these close losses to the Phillies evoke the razor’s edge losses at Miami and San Juan that defined their times (and still might this coming weekend, though let’s hope not). In a much broader and worse sense, the Marlins are the Marlins and nobody else will ever be the Marlins.
Being a Mets fan all my life in Central NJ (Trenton area), I’ve always disliked the Phillies more than any other team……even more than the Yanks. But these are all great points Will. If the Marlins folded……no one would care. Can’t say the same (myself included) about the Phils.